Ex-aide to city councilor; cop killer nabbed in ‘Operation Nor’Easter’

Credit: Angela Rowlings

Accompanied by other law enforcement officials, FBI Special Agent in Charge Harold H. Shaw speaks during a news conference announcing 29 individuals have been charged with federal and state drug, firearms and counterfeiting offenses, August 23, 2018 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Staff Photo By Angela Rowlings/Boston Herald)

Cops nabbed more than two dozen of who they say are the area’s worst drug and gun dealers yesterday — including a City Hall employee accused of slinging dope on the job and a man back out on the street after killing a Boston police officer.

Gary Jamal Webster, 35, of Boston, City Councilor Michelle Wu’s former $53,058-a-year director of constituent services, was among the 29 people facing charges as a result of what authorities dubbed “Operation Nor’easter.”

Cops say Webster dealt thousands of dollars worth of cocaine and fentanyl to informants from his father’s home on Codman Hill in Dorchester in the fall of 2016 — when Wu was council president.

Webster “allegedly arranged numerous drug deals on the taxpayer’s dime, while on the job working for the city of Boston,” said Harold “Hank” Shaw, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field offices. It was not alleged that Webster was dealing at City Hall itself.

“We are all shocked at the allegations,” Wu said in a statement, acknowledging Webster worked for her when she first took office.

Webster now works for the Boston Planning & Development Agency, which said it placed him on unpaid leave yesterday.

“It’s very disappointing,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said. “Never heard a complaint, so a little taken back by what transpired today.”

Webster also briefly worked for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s election campaign in 2012, records show, earning just under $2,000.

U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said more than 150 federal, state and local law enforcement agents fanned out early yesterday morning and arrested 23 people in Boston and Brockton. Four were already in custody, and two more remain on the lam.

“These defendants were specifically targeted by law enforcement because of their long histories of violence and drug-trafficking,” Lelling said.

Lelling said many of the defendants were already “household names” to police in Boston and Brockton.

“Many of these targets have been destroying their neighborhoods with drug dealing and violence, including gunfire, for years, and have used their own street credibility to train the next generation of offenders on those streets,” Lelling said.

“Many of the defendants that we charged today are unusually old for this kind of activity,” the U.S. attorney said. “The dynamic that we see is these players try to insulate themselves from being on the street by using younger individuals to do the street-level dealing.”

The raids led to the seizure of 15 guns, while 130 controlled drug buys yielded bags of fentanyl, heroin and cocaine.

Also arrested was Terrell Walker, 63, of Brighton, indicted yesterday on charges including selling a .40-caliber Ruger handgun and 42 rounds of ammunition to a cooperating witness in 2016.

Walker was convicted of murdering Boston police Detective John D. Schroeder during a South End pawn shop robbery on Nov. 30, 1973, but later pleaded guilty to manslaughter after the conviction was thrown out on a technicality. He was later sentenced to serve 20 years for other armed robberies.

The Roxbury headquarters of the Boston Police Department is named in honor of Schroeder, 54, a father of nine, and his younger brother Walter Schroeder, a Boston patrolman shot to death in the line of duty at age 42 on Sept. 24, 1970.

“The Schroeder family has been notified. They’re delighted that this individual, who should have been in jail anyway, is once again incarcerated,” Boston police Commissioner William G. Gross said.

Walker, hiding his face from the media at the Suffolk Superior Court where he pleaded not guilty yesterday, was held on $500,000 bail. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.